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“haha. As you go higher up, those first year courses that you thought were impossible seem like child’s play.”

My mistake. OU had a strange class numbering system back then. Math 201 was a third year class. 0XX courses were first year. 1XX course for sophomores, 2XX for juniors. Math 201 was Differential Equations for Engineers and Scientists. There were eighteen semester hours of other math prerequisites.

Lafond was just a the kind of professor who delighted in flunking folks. In fact, there was another equivalent course in Differential Equations restricted to Math majors. Lafond was not allowed to teach that course. IOW, Math 201 was ‘too difficult’ for math majors.

I remember the first day of my first attempt. Lafond walked in, looked around the room, and noted that at least half the class was back from last semester and that he expected fully half of us to be back the next semester. I dropped the course later that day.

The trick to 201 was to take the class at 8AM when there were two sections offered. If Lafond showed up, you dropped and enrolled again the next semester. Lafond taught all other 201 classes.

The problem was Lafond gave really tough exams. Did not grade on the curve and any error was a 25 point deduction.

On my second attempt I got a different professor, took my C and went on to complex variables.

“I remember the joys of advanced gas turbine theory. 46% class average.”

We had one of those too. Think it was called Advanced Gas Dynamics. Taught by a 24 year old PhD who wrote differential equations faster than you can write sentences. Actually, passed out xeroxed class notes since most in the class couldn’t take notes as fast as he wrote. Extremely disdainful of ‘practical engineers’. Not one of my favorite classes.

OU had a strange class numbering system back then. Math 201 was a third year class. 0XX courses were first year. 1XX course for sophomores, 2XX

Strange numbers? Many industrial controllers label I/O points similarly. Some of our cheapest, and, therefore, most prevalent Rockwell (Allen Bradley) junk runs its software octally, 0-7, 10-17, while numbering the screw terminals on the input board 0-15. When installing or troubleshooting, parallaxic dyslexia abounds.

Did not grade on the curve and any error was a 25 point deduction.

I guess he had the popular all or nothing philosophy. Most older profs I had gave you nothing if your answer was wrong.

Every time people complained he would bring up some tiny error at NASA that crashed a billion dollar spacecraft or a hotel lobby that collapsed because of bad math and say "a small mistake still gets you in big **it."

Or "if you can't add with a calculator by now, go waste your time in the business school".